Age, Biology and Risky Behavior

Published: September 24, 2007

The ''ballooning crises'' among baby boomers that Mr. Males lists are really no surprise. What else might you expect from a generation whose mantra was, ''If it feels good, it's O.K.''?

So many of the accepted beliefs of our generation have proved to be, dare I say, shallow. Judgment became taboo, as did the concepts of right, wrong and sacrifice.

The effect on oneself became the primary consideration for making decisions.

Doing whatever feels good is no more satisfying for the middle-aged than it is for teenagers. Like anything good, self-respect has to be earned.

Making the hard decisions and doing what is right may be a lost message, but it is still one that delivers in the end.

Andrea Economos
Scarsdale, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2007

To the Editor:

Mike Males refutes the claim that adolescents are neurologically prone to risky behavior by showing that in fact, adults today take more risks than their children.

This approach applies nicely to another of the claims lobbed at teenagers: the ''neuroscientific'' assertion that teenagers lack the capacity to plan for the future.

Today's adults save less than any generation since the Depression. They have failed to mount a serious response to global warming. They have raided the Social Security trust fund and have run up a $9 trillion national debt to finance their spending and tax cuts.

The hasty decision to invade Iraq and the subprime mortgage debacle also constitute failures of long-term planning.

Today's teenagers are going to have to clean up after the boomers' oil and spending binges. Let's hope they act more mature than their parents.

Stephen Serene
Washington, Sept. 17, 2007

To the Editor:

A small amount of time invested toward understanding the dynamics of cultural transmission among human beings would benefit those in the scientific community. Those who proclaim that the development of the brain's cognitive control system alone is responsible for maturational behavior are arguing against the weight of thousands of years of human social evolution.

Adolescents have always been initiated into adult behavior by the tribal systems they were born into, regardless of locale or history. It was never unusual for 15-year-olds to take their place in the circle of adulthood and be accepted as thus when this occurred.

Our contemporary culture does not have a very good system in place for fostering psychological maturation. Thousands of chronological adults remain in adolescence, while the adolescents themselves are not mentored to cross that maturational threshold.

My practice is spent with both teenagers and adults. I have found that both age groups are searching at the deepest level for someone or something to pull them, as Robert Bly has stated, ''over the line'' to full psychological adulthood.

Peter E. Gradilone
New Rochelle, N.Y., Sept. 17, 2007

To the Editor:

While it's true that neuroscientists don't know everything about the brain and how it functions, we do know that adults do not suddenly become violent, irresponsible, accident-prone, beer-swilling, pill-popping reprobates in midlife.

Typically, their misbehavior is only the most recent example of a longstanding pattern that began, ironically enough, in adolescence and illustrates the downside of having an adaptive brain, which can change for the worse as well as for the better.

Perhaps if we had known then how experience, such as youthful experiments with addictive drugs, alter the physical fabric of the brain in long-lasting ways, or had intervened while their immature brains were still maximally pliant, more baby boomers would be good examples for their children, rather than an embarrassment to them.

Debra Niehoff
Newtown, Pa., Sept. 18, 2007
The writer is the author of a book about the biology of the brain and violence.

To the Editor:

There may be a bigger picture than the one Mike Males presents when he reveals the hypocrisy of middle-age adults wagging fingers at adolescents.

I suspect that many of these badly behaving adults come from the lower and middle economic classes.

Given this era of unprecedented wealth for an exclusive few; the decline of real wages; astronomical higher-education costs; health care and housing woes; the obsolescence and theft of pensions; not to mention mergers, layoffs and outsourcing, it's no surprise that adults increasingly turn to alcohol, crime, drugs and risky sex to escape their woes.

Mr. Males has laid out the human costs of American capitalism. The remedy? Electing politicians whose ideas will create positive social and economic change for all, not for the few.

It's time we take care of the families on Main Street, not just Wall Street.